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Beijing restricts foreign stake in TV, film: report

China has imposed a moratorium on new foreign investment in film and TV production companies, a news report yesterday quoted a regulatory official as saying.

The decision sets aside rules issued in 2004 that allowed foreigners to take minority stakes in local production companies, Zhu Hong (朱虹), an official of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television told the Financial Times.

Such a move would be a blow to foreign media companies that are eager to tap a Chinese market with 400 million increasingly affluent TV viewers and booming video sales.

"Our policy is to temporarily not approve the creation of new joint companies," Zhu was quoted as saying.

"People can jointly invest in filming individual movies and individual television dramas, but we are not going to approve the creation of program production companies,'' Zhu said.

The Financial Times didn't say whether Zhu gave a reason for the moratorium or when it might end.

Phone calls yesterday to Zhu's office weren't answered.

Another official, Liu Chun (劉春), of the Film Bureau's International Exchange Division, denied that the agency had such a policy.

Employees who answered phones in the agency's publicity office and its European-US Cooperation Department said they hadn't heard of such a change.

Beijing has tightened curbs on foreign media involvement over the past two years, both to protect Chinese companies from competition and to maintain the communist government's control over what the public sees and hears.

Chinese officials disclosed earlier this year that the government had suspended approval of new Chinese-foreign magazine joint ventures without publicizing the change.

Regulators also have restricted use of foreign programming on Chinese television.

Zhu told the Financial Times that the agency wasn't considering expanding the limited rights granted to a handful of foreign television channels to broadcast in China.
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